Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Fall Season Wrap-Up

The Community Poetry Slam was a resounding success! Everyone was a winner, but Eli Whitney brought home the hardware - winning both Golden Ball awards as well as the middle school boys League Cup. The elementary girls at Castellanos won the Golden Boot, and the Pope middle school girls won the League Cup. The Golden Ball award is America SCORES’ highest team honor, based on our core values of Teamwork, Leadership and Commitment. It is bestowed on the school that collectively most displays these characteristics throughout the season. Similarly, the Golden Boot honors the same values, but highlights the TLC achievements of a single boys or girls team. The middle school League Cups are given the teams with the most points (3 for a win, 1 for a tie) at the end of the season.

The Pope girls’ success was especially sweet: A predominantly African-American school, the majority of the students had never played soccer or even seen soccer before they joined the SCORES program a few years ago. The first few seasons were rough to say the least – not a lot of goals scored and wins were few and far between. However, they continued to embody the SCORES core values of teamwork, leadership and most importantly commitment. They enjoyed practice and loved game days despite the lack of wins. Gradually and with lots of hard work and dedication, they improved from practice to practice and season to season. The final stage of their metamorphosis was completed this past fall season; they become the first SCORES team to go undefeated and were duly crowed the league championship! Jubilant celebration photos from the Community Slam are below: